at length the extraordinary creature that had come to their rescue reached the island; and with jip and the doctor still clinging to his wide back, he crawled out of the water on to the beach.
and then john dolittle, seeing its head for the first time, cried out in great excitement:
"jip, it's a quiffenodochus, as sure as i'm alive!"
"a quiffeno-what-us?" asked jip.
"a quiffenodochus," said the doctor—"a prehistoric beast. naturalists thought they were extinct—that there weren't any more live ones anywhere in the world. this is a great day, jip. i'm awfully glad i came here."
the tremendous animal which the fantippans had called a dragon had now climbed right up the beach and was standing fully revealed in all his strangeness. at first he looked like some curious mixture between a crocodile and a giraffe. he had short, spreading legs, but enormously long tail and neck. on his head were two stubby little horns.
as soon as the doctor and jip had climbed down off his back he swung his head around on the end of that enormous neck and said to the doctor:
"do you feel all right now?"
"yes, thanks," said john dolittle.
"i was afraid," said the creature, "that i wouldn't be in time to save your life. it was my brother who first saw you. we thought it was a native and we were getting ready to give him our usual terrifying reception. but while we watched from behind the trees my brother suddenly cried: 'great heavens! that's doctor dolittle—and he's drowning. see, how he waves his arms! he must be saved at any cost. there isn't one man like that born in a thousand years! let's go after him, quick!' then word was passed around the island that john dolittle, the great doctor, was drowning out in the straits. of course, we had all heard of you. and, rushing down to a secret cove which we have on the far side of the island, we dashed into the sea and swam out to you under water. i was the best swimmer and got to you first. i'm awfully glad i was in time. you're sure you feel all right?"
"oh, quite," said the doctor, "thank you. but why did you swim under water?"
"we didn't want the natives to see us," said the strange beast. "they think we are dragons—and we let them go on thinking it. because then they don't come near the island and we have our country to ourselves."
the creature stretched his long neck still longer and whispered in the doctor's ear:
"they think we live on men and breathe fire! but all we ever really eat is bananas. and when anyone tries to come here we go down to a hollow in the middle of the island and suck up the mist, the fog, that always hangs around there. then we come back to the beach and roar and rampage. and we breathe the fog out through our nostrils and they think it's smoke. that's the way we've kept this island to ourselves for a thousand years. and this is the only part of the world where we are left—where we can live in peace."
"how very interesting!" said the doctor. "naturalists have thought your kind of animals are no longer living, you know. you are quiffenodochi, are you not?"
"oh, no," said the beast. "the quiffenodochus has gone long ago. we are the piffilosaurus. we have six toes on the back feet, while the quiffenodochi, our cousins, have only five. they died out about two thousand years ago."
"but where are the rest of your people?" asked the doctor. "i thought you said that many of you had swum out to rescue us."
"they did," said the piffilosaurus. "but they kept hidden under the water, lest the natives on the shore should see and get to know that the old story about the dragon's mother-in-law wasn't true. while i was bringing you here they were swimming all around you under the water, ready to help if i needed them. they have gone around to the secret cove so they may come ashore unseen. we had better be going on ourselves now. whatever happens, we mustn't be seen from the shore and have the natives coming here. it would be the end of us if that should ever happen, because, between ourselves, although they think us so terrible, we are really more harmless than sheep."
"do any other animals live here?" asked the doctor.
"oh, yes, indeed," said the piffilosaurus. "this island is entirely peopled by harmless, vegetable-feeding creatures. if we had the others, of course, we wouldn't last long. but come, i will show you around the island. let us go quietly up that valley there, so we shan't be seen till we reach the cover of the woods."
then john dolittle and jip were taken by the piffilosaurus all over the island of no-man's-land.
the doctor said afterward that he had never had a more enjoyable or more instructive day. the shores of the island all around were high and steep, which gave it the appearance jim had spoken of—like a plum pudding. but in the centre, on top, there was a deep and pleasant hollow, invisible from the sea and sheltered from the winds. in this great bowl, a good thirty miles across, the piffilosauruses had lived at peace for a thousand years, eating ripe bananas and frolicking in the sun.
down by the banks of the streams the doctor was shown great herds of hippopotami, feeding on the luscious reeds that grew at the water's edge. in the wide fields of high grass there were elephants and rhinoceri browsing. on the slopes where the forests were sparse he spied long-necked giraffes, nibbling from the trees. monkeys and deer of all kinds were plentiful. and birds swarmed everywhere. in fact, every kind of creature that does not eat meat was there, living peaceably and happily with the others in this land where vegetable food abounded and the disturbing tread of man was never heard.
standing on the top of the hill with jip and the piffilosaurus at his side, the doctor gazed down over the wide bowl full of contented animal life and heaved a sigh.
"this beautiful land could also have been called the 'animals' paradise,'" he murmured. "long may they enjoy it to themselves! may this, indeed, be no-man's-land forever!"
"you, doctor," said the deep voice of the piffilosaurus at his elbow, "are the first human in a thousand years that has set foot here. the last one was king kakaboochi's mother-in-law."
"by the way, what really became of her?" asked the doctor. "the natives believe she was turned into a dragon, you know."
"we married her off," said the great creature, nibbling idly at a lily stalk. "we couldn't stand her here, any more than the king could. you never heard anybody talk so in all your life. yes, we carried her one dark night by sea far down the coast of africa and left her at the palace door of a deaf king, who ruled over a small country south of the congo river. he married her. of course, being deaf, he didn't mind her everlasting chatter in the least."
and now for several days the doctor forgot all about his post office work and king koko and his ship at anchor, and everything else. for he was kept busy from morning to night with all the animals who wanted to consult him about different things.
many of the giraffes were suffering from sore hoofs and he showed them where to find a special root that could be put into a foot bath and would bring immediate relief. the rhinoceroses' horns were growing too long and john dolittle explained to them how by grinding them against a certain kind of stone and by eating less grass and more berries they could keep the growth down. a special sort of nut tree that the deer were fond of had grown scarce and almost died out from constant nibbling. and the doctor showed the chief stags how, by taking a few nuts and poking them down into the soft earth with their hoofs before the rainy season set in, they could make new trees grow and so increase the supply.
one day when he was pulling out a loose tooth for a baby hippopotamus with his watch-chain, speedy-the-skimmer turned up, looking rather annoyed.
"well," said the neat little bird, settling down on the ground at his feet, "i've found you at last, doctor. i've been hunting all over creation for you."
"oh, hulloa, speedy," said the doctor. "glad to see you. did you want me for something?"
"why, of course, i did," said speedy. "we finished the nesting season two days ago, and you had said you wanted to see me about some special business as soon as it was over. i went to your house, but dab-dab had no idea where you could be. then i hunted all over. at last i heard some gossiping boatmen down at the harbor say that you came to this island five days ago and had never returned. all the fantippans have given you up for lost. they say you have surely been eaten by the dragons that live here. i got an awful fright—though, of course, i didn't quite believe the dragon story. still, you had been gone so long i didn't know what to make of it. the post office, as you can imagine, is in a worse mess than ever."
"humph!" said the doctor, who had now got the loose tooth out and was showing the baby hippo how to rinse his mouth in the river. "i'm sorry. i suppose i should have sent you a message. but i've been so awfully busy. let's go up under the shade of those palms and sit down. it was about the post office that i wanted to talk to you."
